March 6th, 2015:

We are advised that in order to better meet a 2007 agreement in combating “global warming”, our government is to implement further measures to reduce energy consumption.

I am all for reducing the waste in the use of energy – a laudable if futile aim, particularly if it is being done in order to reduce global warming – and reduction in pollution. However, please refrain from telling us that the essential trace gas carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

It is amazing that our government maintains, strengthens even, its agenda in relation to global warming when there has been no global warming at all for the last 18 years and counting. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges that.

All Hongkongers will have enjoyed traditional food during the Lunar New Year, such as turnip cakes, rice cakes, braised vegetables and red fermented beancurd.

All these feasts will have generated a substantial amount of food waste.

We all need to reflect on the part we play in discarding so much food. How many of us, during our festive feasts, left our plates empty?

With my family, I ate poon choi on the first and second days of the new year. We could not finish it all, but instead of throwing it away kept it as leftovers.

As well as trying to use leftover food at home, when we’re out, we should order less food. And if it is a set meal, for example, in a Chinese restaurant with a lot of different dishes, you can go without rice so you have room for other dishes.

There is a Chinese saying, “May you always get more than you wish for”. And it has long been a Chinese tradition to order more food than you will need to eat.

This is a bad habit and we need to change attitudes. We should only order what we need and not throw away the food that we do not eat.

The letter by Yannis Mak (“Recycling policy put on back burner”, March 3) reminded me of some concerns regarding recycling bins.

When you see recycling bins outside a building, you have to ask if it makes sense to have only three of them outside a 39-storey public housing block with roughly 16 apartments on each level.

So there are three little bins to hold all the recyclable material from around 600 households. It gives the impression that these bins are placed outside housing blocks by the government for decoration.

Recycling bins have been situated outside these buildings for years and yet little has changed.

Why doesn’t the relevant government department place these bins on each floor of a housing block? It is not easy to change old habits and get people to adopt new, environmentally-friendly ones, but having facilities like bins within easy reach is a big step forward.

I am also concerned about plastic recycling. I understand plastic bottles that are placed in the recycling bin are ending up in our landfills, because plastic recycling is not profitable. There are citizens who still care but they are put off by government indifference.